Thursday, November 15th, 2007

Death From Above ’07

Yesterday a bird fell out of the sky into our home, dead. Not sure what this omen may portend for me. But I do know what it means for migration season. Thank you Cosco Busan and the Coast Guard.

posted by @ 10:32 am | 3 Comments

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

Ode To Indonesia :: Jogja Journey







Buddha @ Borobodur, Football @ Code River
Merapi under cover, Boys walking their pony at UGM Sunday street fair
Soto on Sunday, Code River hillside houses
Tembokbombers, Santa is a Metalhead
TV in tow, Pedicabs at twilight
Lovehatelove @ Malioboro, Borobodur
Dangdut fever, Fahmi Alattas rocking plastic-straw flute

Much love and respect to all my global fam…

posted by @ 4:01 pm | 1 Comment

Monday, November 5th, 2007

Me In The Nation:: M.I.A. :: News From Nowhere


Where is my mind?

Need any more bandwith be spent on M.I.A.? Oh yeah, I definitely think so. So here I am, belatedly, writing in The Nation on the question of M.I.A..

A BIG apology to those whom I owe callbacks and emails. I am far far outside of the 48 right now, closer in mindstate and distance to this and this than to this. Like Beres Hammond says, keep holding on.

More on all the rest soon. So many things to say…

For now::

Children–brown-skinned children from Liberia, India, Jamaica and Baltimore, the post-hip-hop nationals of what M.I.A. calls World Town–climb all over the grooves of Kala. Their noise becomes part of the record’s texture: they shriek in delight, laugh and dance; they kick rhymes; they cock guns. Not unlike the fourth season of HBO’s hit The Wire, Kala explores poverty, violence and globalization through the eyes of children left behind. M.I.A.’s London refugee crew sling sugar water, bootleg CDs and color TVs to stay ahead of Border and Immigration, send remittances back to Asia or Africa and survive another day while their parents pray they become accountants. “Why has everyone got hustle on their mind?” she asks.

On the opener, “Bamboo Banga,” a nod to Darkroom Productions’ Baltimore street anthem “Bmore Banga,” she sets up an image of a Hummer speeding across the desert with a quote from the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner”: “Roadrunner roadrunner/Going hundred miles per hour/With your radio on.” For Jonathan Richman, it was the sound of postwar innocence, Kerouac in love with the modern world and the open road. For M.I.A., it’s the sound of Green Zone excess, First World abandonment, white flight on wheels. She roll-calls the planet of slums: Somalia, Angola, Ghana, India, Sri Lanka and Burma. “Now I’m sittin’ down chillin’ on some gunpowder/Strike match, light fire,” she raps. “M.I.A. coming back with power power.” Suddenly the setting isn’t the desert; it’s your country–a Lou Dobbs nightmare, the future sheathed in dark skin come home to your streets. “I’m a roadrunner,” she sings. “I’m a world runner.”

Read the whole thang…

posted by @ 2:36 pm | 5 Comments

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Me and Mother Jones :: Hip-Hop Politics In A New Era

Here’s a preview of the second of my pieces out this month, an overview of the emergence of hip-hop activism in the U.S. and its prospects for 2008 and beyond from Mother Jones. There’s also a timeline…which reminds me to let you know that the book Born In The Bronx by the great Joe Conzo is finally out! More on that soon…for now check this:

Jerry Quickley, hip-hop poet, performance artist, and war correspondent, can describe hell. It is a post-“liberated” Baghdad street, jammed with beat-up Brazilian and Czech sedans spewing trails of carbon monoxide, clouds of dust thickening in the 125-degree heat. He is riding shotgun in his Iraqi friend’s car. “You have no traffic lights because there’s no electricity. You have no police because they’d just be shot or blown up,” he says. “You can barely breathe, traffic’s going nowhere.”

U.S. transport patrols fire into the air in an effort to clear traffic and ward off would-be bombers. Iraqi drivers desperately ram their clunkers into each other to get out of the way. “And while this is all going on,” Quickley says, “this friend of mine is playing songs by 50 Cent.”

The top-selling doo-ragged-and-body-oiled rapper—whose smash debut album was entitled “Get Rich Or Die Trying”, and whose 2005 album “The Massacre” occasioned a multi-platform onslaught that included a book, a feature movie, a bloody videogame, a bling-encrusted line of watches, shoe and “enhanced water” (“hydrate or die trying”) endorsements, not to mention tabloid headlines about a beef with a former protégé culminating in real-life shootings—warbles through the busted car stereo in a nasally drawl, “Many men wish death upon me.”

“Sarte was right,” thought Quickley at that moment. “This is ‘No Exit.'”

For many, this is what hip-hop has become: an omnipresent grisly übermacho soundtrack from which there appears no exit. Tensions exploded this past spring after the April firing of shock jock Don Imus, who had called the largely African American Rutgers women’s college basketball team “nappy-headed ho’s”. While Nike took out ads in the New York Times and on the web that read “Thank you, ignorance…Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak”, Fox News commentators like Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson lectured hip-hop advocates. For two days, Oprah Winfrey and an angry studio audience cornered Russell Simmons, the rapper Common, and music industry executives.

For many, this is what hip-hop has become: an omnipresent grisly, übermacho soundtrack. Don Imus unleashed the latest hip-hop backlash when he noted that in calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos” he was using an argot popularized by rappers. The frenzy of finger-pointing that followed culminated with the spectacle of Bill O’Reilly lecturing hiphop advocates on sexism and the “n word,” while Oprah berated Russell Simmons and other industry executives. The talk show circus aside, there’s plenty of evidence that people are weary of corporate rap. Only 59 million rap albums were sold in the United States last year, down from 90 million in 2001. According to the University of Chicago’s Black Youth Project report, youths—particularly minorities—overwhelmingly believe that rap videos portray women of color in a negative light.

Once a cacophony of diverse voices, the genre now looks like a monoculture whose product, not unlike high-fructose corn
syrup, is designed not to nourish, but simply to get us hooked on other products, from McDonald’s to Courvoisier.

Quickley, though, remains a true believer in hip-hop’s transformational potential. For him, it goes back to the summer of
1976, three years before the Sugarhill Gang’s breakthrough “Rapper’s Delight”…

Read the whole thing here.

posted by @ 5:12 am | 0 Comments

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

The Disappearing Model of Color

The always on-point Guy Trebay on the disappearance of models of color from the runway.

posted by @ 8:43 am | 1 Comment

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

From The Whoa! File on Supersurveillance :: Dragonfly Spy Drones

This stuff is, uh, just bugged out.

posted by @ 7:30 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Join The Jena 6 National Walkout On Monday

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, National Hip-Hop Political Convention, Change The Game, and Sankofa Community Empowerment are being joined by Mos Def, Talib Kweli, M-1, Immortal Technique and student leaders from over 50 campuses to call for a National Student Walk-Out to rally and show support for the Jena 6. Wear black.

Here are their demands:

Judge J.P. Mauffray and District Attorney Reed Walters have engaged in a string of egregious actions, the most recent of which was the denial of bail for Mychal Bell on Friday. We call for:

+ All charges against the Jena 6 be dropped.

+ The immediate release of Mychal Bell.

+ The United States Department of Justice to convene an immediate inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the arrests and prosecutions of the Jena 6.

+ Judge Mauffray to be recused from presiding over Bell ‘s juvenile court hearings or other proceedings.

+ The Louisiana Office of Disciplinary Counsel to investigate Reed Walters for unethical and possibly illegal conduct.

+ The Louisiana Judiciary Commission investigate Judge Mauffray for unethical conduct.

+ The Jena School District superintendent to be removed from office.

If you want to organize and add your school to the list, click here for more info.

posted by @ 8:49 am | 0 Comments

Monday, September 17th, 2007

Kanye With The Lead

Who’s surprised? MTV News’ Shaheem Reid reports that Ye had done almost 800K by Friday, almost a quarter more than 50’s 600K. Reports from the UK have Ye over 50.

In the meantime, 50 seems to be rehearsing his reaction to the final sales tallies here, due Wednesday. He cancelled his European shows, is complaining that Jay-Z’s appearance with Ye on 106+Park upstaged him, and is claiming Def Jam rigged sales. (The back story by LAT’s Chris Lee is here.)

This could be a fun week.

posted by @ 3:52 pm | 2 Comments

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

Maryland Legislator :: Whites Should Boycott Sexist Hip-Hop

But wait! It’s not what you think.

Here’s a provocative essay by The Honorable Justin D. Ross, Maryland Delegate (D-Prince Georges Cty.) and–surprise!–hip-hop parent:

In the current debate over whether hip-hop has become degrading to women and harmful to race relations, I’ve heard quite a bit from black activists, some of whom have fought for years against the sort of lyrics I’m writing about, and I’ve gotten several earfuls from black rap artists.

But I haven’t heard a peep from the white fans who essentially underwrite the industry by purchasing more than 70 percent of the rap music in this country, according to Mediamark Research Inc.

I don’t presume to tell any artist, studio executive or record label what to record or not record. But I will presume to ask young white customers: Why are we buying this stuff?

Now it’s still very debatable whether hip-hop is actually purchased in such proportions by whites. (Read Bakari Kitwana’s Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, And the New Reality of Race in America first, then check this discussion and this discussion. I’ve done a bit of research on this and can say definitively there is no definitive study, there’s still only gut feel.

But no one else has yet said what the Delegate from Maryland has said…

posted by @ 11:55 am | 3 Comments

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

Showdown Tuesday’s Here

Will ‘Ye shut ’em down? Will 50 be underwater? In the immortal words of Cee-Lo: But who cares?

(For more thorough, often hilarious coverage, check Miss Info’s blog…)

posted by @ 9:39 am | 1 Comment



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